Electronic Frontier Foundation

Defending your rights in the digital world

At first blush, it seems obvious that a picture could reveal your location. A picture of you standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge sensibly leads to the conclusion you're in the San Francisco Bay Area when the photo was taken. But now that smartphones are quickly supplanting traditional digital cameras, and even traditional cameras now have wifi built in, many more pictures are finding their way onto the web, in places like Twitter, Flickr, Google+ and Tumblr. In a span of 10 days, popular photo social network Instagram added 10 million new users as a result of the release of its Android app and its acquisition by Facebook. And the location data hidden in these quick and candid pictures -- even when your location isn't as obvious as "standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge" -- is becoming another easy way for anyone, including law enforcement, to figure out where you are.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/picture-worth-thousand-words-...